Gumroad is dead, haven’t you heard?

While looking for alternatives, you might have stumbled upon a service with the freaking awesome name Lemon Squeezy.

It’s a strong Gumroad competitor that offers similar features, lower fees, widely available payouts, and much more.

Let’s dive in!

Why not Gumroad?

I used to be a huge Gumroad fan. Still am, honestly.

But they shot themselves in the foot by introducing a new flat fee of 10% for each sale of my products. Before this increase, high-volume sellers enjoyed fees as low as 2.9%.

That’s quite the increase.

No wonder creators are fleeing in bunches. And looking for comparable or even better alternatives.

Meet Lemon Squeezy…

What is Lemon Squeezy?

Make Lemonade, a small team of developers and designers has created Lemon Squeezy. They’re also behind other platforms you might have heard about, like Iconic or Premium Pixels.

I love many things about the company behind Lemon Squeezy, including the freakishly stunning (and yellow) website. Nobody does that.

But I digress. Back to the topic.

Lemon Squeezy is an eCommerce platform for digital products. In their own words:

Lemon Squeezy is the all-in-one platform for running your SaaS business. Payments, subscriptions, global tax compliance, fraud prevention, multi-currency support, failed payment recovery, PayPal integration and more.

The team also has a vision for other products and services, such as a website builder and a way to curate content on the web. That’s on their publicly available road map. I love when companies are transparent like that. Gumroad does that too (just FYI).

What sets Lemon Squeezy apart?

Great question.

Two birds with one stone

Lemon Squeezy’s two business models are digital product sales and email marketing. Those two should go hand in hand. Can’t sell stuff without marketing it. Email marketing is always a good choice.

While Gumroad does the same two things, Lemon Squeezy has the edge in fees.

Money, money, money

For each transaction, you pay a 5% fee + 50c.

And you’ll get free email marketing and automation (with proper segmentation) for up to 500 contacts. For more, you’ll have to pay a gradually increasing monthly amount, for examples, $10 for 1000 contacts, $35 for 5000.

That’s still ways cheaper than competitors like ConvertKit ($66–93 for 5000 subscribers) or Mailchimp ($69+ for 5000 contacts) in regards to Email marketing and automation.

For selling, a 5% fee + 50c is considerably less than the 10% fee on Gumroad. It’s not the cheapest by any means though. Payhip offers 5% + payment provider fees, Flurly cuts this down to only a 1% fee.

Payment providers

It’s not only about the money, though. Lemon Squeezy does offer considerably more payment providers and integrations than the aforementioned alternatives, actually up to 16 payment methods. Most countries around the world will find a fitting one here.

That has always been a weak point of Gumroad.

Tax features

Additionally — and this is similar to Gumroad in many regards — Lemon Squeezy acts as a merchant of record. They take care of tax requirements, including EU & UK VAT for European customers, a little-talked-about legal regulation.

Shop features

Lemon Squeezy also supports recurring payment options, upgrades or downgrades, bundles, upsells, discount codes, and more.

An affiliate program — a strong argument for Gumroad — is on their immediate roadmap and should be released by the end of January 2023.

Reliable, real-time analytics round up this impressive tool.

For developers, Lemon Squeezy offers deep API access & many options for integrations and actions.

The bottom line

Lemon Squeezy seems like an all-around solid platform for Gumroad quitters. It was on my shortlist of alternatives.

In the end, I decided to go with Payhip — you can find my review of them here.

But I would still consider Lemon Squeezy if I wanted to move from Payhip. Why move again? Payhip doesn’t offer any notable email automation functionality which is a major con. With Lemon Squeezy, this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

If you’re in the middle of leaving Gumroad, try Lemon Squeezy for free. Check its capabilities and see if it’s the right platform for you.

If not, have a look at Payhip. Or some other alternatives I mentioned here.